Teachers to Share Travel Experiences with Students

Six area teachers will be able to open new worlds and cultures to their students next school year after returning from study trips sponsored by the Fund for Teachers.

The teachers were among 66 Oklahoma teachers to receive the fellowship grants awarded by Fund for Teachers, through the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence and the Tulsa Community Foundation. Each year, Fund for Teachers awards grants to enable teachers to experience summer learning treks and bring their experiences to their students.

These area teachers received grants:

• Tony Goetz Elementary School resource specialist Cheri Fite will go to England and explore the world of literary hero Harry Potter in an effort to bring literature to life in her classroom.

• Tahlequah High School career-technology teacher Brenda McClain will visit World War II locations in Germany and collect video, photographs and global positioning coordinates.

• Paula Galbraith, Vanessa Gilley and Delicia White of Eufaula Elementary School will go to Costa Rica and learn how the indigenous Indian culture compares to Oklahoma’s Native American culture.

Fite said she wants her trip to show her students the differences not only between the United States and England, but also between fact and fiction. She said she will visit many of the places mentioned in the books or shown in the movies based on the books.

“I’m going to take pictures all over England,” she said. “I’m going to the train station at King’s Crossing, where Harry Potter left on Platform Nine and Three-Fourths. I’ll show there is a Platform 9 and a Platform 10, but Harry’s platform is fictional. I’ll show that the witchcraft and wizardry in the books are fictional.”

Fite said many of her students have reading disabilities.

“A lot of my kids struggle. So one of the things I’m going to show is how Harry Potter struggled with things such as learning to fly the broom,” she said. “I’ll show that he never gave up on what he wanted to accomplish.”

She said she’ll also use the trip to answer students’ questions such as, how do people in England get around or how do they buy things.

The Eufaula teachers said they will find all sorts of things during their 11-day trip to Costa Rica. For example, they will collect data on sea turtles that lay eggs on the beach and learn about reforestation programs. The three also will spend time with a family belonging to the Bribri tribe in Central America.

“We want to compare their life with the Native American culture we have here,” Galbraith said. “We could bring back artifacts to donate to the library with video records of sounds and games.”

The three also will do some in-service training for other teachers.

“A main purpose of our visit is conservation and the need to care for the environment,” Galbraith said.

The teachers said the grant is worth about $10,000.

“We’re very excited about it,” White said.

At Tahlequah, McClain will use global positioning systems, geographic information systems and podcasting to help her students learn technology and her fellow instructors teach history. McClain said she had lived in Germany for six and a half years.

She said the GPS will use longitude and latitude to find a location while the GIS will plat the location on a map. She said she also will take pictures and video, which students will be able to make into a podcast, which history and English teachers could use.

“I’m really excited, because this allows me the opportunity to use history and incorporate technology into it,” she said.